Emplora
Mobile App / Enterprise HR

Humanizing the
Enterprise Experience

A mobile-first employee management system designed around people, not processes — bringing clarity, speed, and dignity to everyday HR workflows.

Role Lead Product Designer
Timeline 2024
Category Mobile App / Enterprise HR
Platform iOS / Android
View on Behance Read Case Study
Attendance 95%
38 / 40 present
Live
Headcount
40
Active employees +2 this mo.
Emplora HR dashboard
0 Core Modules
0 User Roles
0 Task Completion
0 Leave Application
The Problem

HR built for admins,
not for people

Enterprise HR systems were designed for HR administrators, not for the employees who used them daily. The result: low adoption rates, high support ticket volumes, and frustrated employees who felt managed rather than empowered.

The Opportunity

There was a clear gap between the tools HR departments had and the experience employees actually deserved. Simple tasks — submitting leave, checking a payslip, viewing attendance — were buried under workflows designed for backend administrators.

Emplora's mission was to flip that. Design from the employee outward. Make every common task feel effortless, and let the HR admin complexity stay invisible until it was actually needed.

Employee-First Design Role-Adaptive UI Mobile HR Enterprise UX
Research Insights
01 / 03

The Admin-First Trap

Legacy HR systems were optimized for HR admin workflows, making simple employee tasks — submitting leave, checking payslips — require 7 or more taps. Employee frustration was baked in by design.

02 / 03

Information Overload

HR apps displayed raw data from backend systems without curation. Employees saw everything, which meant they found nothing relevant. The signal was buried in system noise.

03 / 03

Role Disconnect

Employees, managers, and HR admins had fundamentally different mental models of what "the HR app" should do. One interface trying to serve all three failed all three — a classic one-size-fits-none failure.

02 — User Research

User Persona & Goals

Understanding who we design for — their motivations, goals, and pain points.

👤
Nisha Kapoor
HR Manager, 35
Goals
  • Track attendance across teams in real time
  • Automate leave approvals to reduce delays
  • Generate payroll reports without manual effort
Pain Points
  • Manual spreadsheet tracking is error-prone and time-consuming
  • Fragmented HR tools that don't talk to each other
🧑
Arjun Singh
Team Lead, 28
Goals
  • View team schedules and availability at a glance
  • Approve leave requests quickly from mobile
  • Track project hours across the team
Pain Points
  • No real-time visibility into team availability
  • Approval delays frustrate his direct reports
👩
Meera Rao
Employee, 24
Goals
  • Apply for leave directly from her phone
  • Track payslips and salary breakdowns easily
  • View the team calendar without calling HR
Pain Points
  • Complex desktop-only HR portal is unusable on mobile
  • Slow approval responses with no status visibility

03 — Business Challenges

Core Challenges

The structural problems blocking efficient HR operations across the organisation.

📊

Manual Spreadsheet Dependency

72% of HR tasks still rely on manual spreadsheets, introducing compounding errors and wasting hours that should be spent on people, not data entry.

🔗

Fragmented HR Ecosystem

Attendance, payroll, leave, and communication tools are siloed across multiple disconnected platforms with no unified source of truth.

📱

No Mobile Accessibility

68% of employees prefer mobile HR access, but existing tools are desktop-only — locking employees out of self-service when they need it most.

📉

Poor Data Visibility

Managers and HR teams make decisions on stale data. Without real-time dashboards, attendance anomalies and leave conflicts go undetected until it's too late.

04 — Secondary Research

Market Insights

HR Automation
72%
HR Tasks Still Manual
Despite enterprise digitisation, nearly three-quarters of HR tasks are still completed manually — representing a massive opportunity for workflow automation.
Leave Management
4.5 days
Average Leave Approval Time
The industry average approval cycle is 4.5 days. Employees waiting this long report significantly lower satisfaction with HR processes and management responsiveness.
Employee Preference
68%
Prefer Mobile HR Access
68% of employees want to access HR services from their mobile device — but most enterprise HR platforms remain designed exclusively for desktop browsers.

05 — User Stories

What Users Need

As a... I want to... So that... Priority
HR Manager View real-time attendance across all teams from one dashboard I can identify absences and issues without checking multiple systems High
Team Lead Approve or decline leave requests in one tap with full context My team gets timely responses and I have the information I need to decide High
Employee Apply for leave from my phone in three taps or fewer I don't have to sit at a desktop or call HR for a simple request High
Admin Generate payroll reports automatically at month-end Finance gets accurate numbers without manual reconciliation work Medium
Finance Head Access integrated payroll and attendance data in one view I can validate payroll against attendance without cross-referencing multiple spreadsheets Medium

06 — Competitor Analysis

Market Landscape

Feature BambooHR Darwinbox Keka Emplora
Mobile App ~ ✓ ~ ✓
Leave Automation ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Attendance Tracking ~ ✓ ✓ ✓
Payroll Integration ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Real-time Notifications ~ ✓ ~ ✓
Analytics Dashboard ✓ ✓ ~ ✓

07 — User Flow

The Journey

01
Login
Biometric or PIN authentication with role-adaptive landing experience
02
Dashboard
Personalised home screen showing "My Day" — relevant metrics for each role
03
Select Action
Quick-access cards for Leave, Attendance, or Payroll — the three most common tasks
04
Submit / Review
Employee submits request or manager reviews with contextual team data
05
Notification
Real-time push notifications keep all parties informed of status changes instantly
06
Approval
One-tap approval or decline with automatic update to attendance and payroll records

08 — Toolkits

Tools & Workflow

The tools and methods used throughout the design process.

🎨
Figma
UI Design & Component Library
✏️
Adobe Illustrator
Icon & Illustration System
🧪
Maze
Usability Testing & Validation
📋
Notion
Research Documentation & Specs
🔧
Zeplin
Design Handoff & Developer Specs
Design Process

From confusion
to workflow clarity

A five-phase process grounded in role-based user research — because a system built for three distinct users must start by truly understanding all three.

01
User Role Mapping

Deep-dive persona work across all three user roles: employee, manager, and HR admin. Mapped the distinct mental models, daily goals, and friction points for each.

Deliverables: 3 distinct personas, role-based pain point hierarchy.

02
Jobs-to-be-Done Framework

Translated persona insights into a JTBD canvas. Identified what each role was truly trying to accomplish — functional, emotional, and social jobs — not just feature requests.

Deliverables: JTBD canvas per role, feature priority matrix.

03
Mobile-First IA

Designed information architecture mobile-first — starting from what fits in a thumb-reach zone and building up. Role-adaptive navigation meant each user only ever saw what was relevant to them.

Deliverables: IA diagrams, role-branching user flow maps.

04
UI Design System & Accessibility

Built a mobile design system from scratch: Growth Green/violet palette, 8px grid, role-based component variants, and a comprehensive HR-specific component library covering all 8 modules. All colour combinations were tested against WCAG AA standards — a critical requirement for enterprise HR software that may be used on low-contrast screens, in varying lighting conditions, and by employees with accessibility needs. Touch targets were set at a minimum of 44px across the entire system.

Deliverables: Component library, design tokens, icon set, accessibility audit report.

05
Prototype & Testing

High-fidelity prototypes tested with representative users from all three roles. Task-completion rate measured against industry benchmark flows — validating the 3-tap leave application target.

Deliverables: Tested prototype, usability findings, iteration log.

Key Design Decisions

How we decided

Three decisions determined who Emplora was really built for — and reshaped every interaction in the product once the answer became clear.

Decision 01
HR Admin-First Design vs. Employee-First Design
Option A — Rejected
Design the primary experience for HR administrators — the people who configure the system, create policies, and manage the organization. Full feature surface up front, self-service as secondary.
Option B — Chosen
Design the primary experience for employees — the people who open the app daily for a single task (check leave balance, download payslip, apply for leave). Admin power remains, but the daily user drives the IA.
Reasoning
HR admins touch the system occasionally. Employees touch it daily. A team of 300 employees doing 20 interactions each per week means 6,000 employee interactions for every 10 admin sessions. Designing for the 1 while 300 people live with the decision daily is the wrong optimization. When the employee becomes the primary user, every metric improves — completion rates, task time, satisfaction — including the admin's, because happy employees generate fewer HR support tickets.
Decision 02
Role Selection Screen vs. Role-Adaptive Auto-Detection
Option A — Rejected
A role selection screen at login — "Are you an Employee, Manager, or HR Admin?" Explicit, flexible, gives users control. Standard enterprise pattern for multi-role platforms.
Option B — Chosen
Auto-detect the user's role from authentication data and immediately render the correct experience — no selection required, no menu to navigate. You open the app and you're in your context.
Reasoning
The system already knows who you are. Asking a user to confirm their own role at every login is asking them to do the system's job. Role-adaptive detection eliminated an unnecessary decision from 6,000 weekly sessions. The 0.5 seconds saved per interaction compounds to hours of reclaimed time per employee per year — and the experience feels like the app knows you, which is how HR tools should feel when the goal is human-centricity.
Decision 03
Comprehensive Leave Form vs. 3-Tap Primary Flow with Progressive Disclosure
Option A — Rejected
Full leave application form — 12 taps covering leave type, dates, reason, document attachment, approver selection, confirmation. Covers all edge cases. Industry standard.
Option B — Chosen
A 3-tap core flow (leave type → dates → confirm) covering 90% of use cases. Advanced fields hidden behind "More options" for the edge cases that need them. Progressive disclosure on demand.
Reasoning
90% of leave applications are routine — the same three steps repeated hundreds of times a year. Building a 12-step form to cover the 10% of edge cases meant the 90% routine transaction suffered every single day. Progressive disclosure lets both coexist: the primary flow is optimized for the common case, advanced options exist for those who need them, and complexity never imposes itself on simplicity. The result was a 75% reduction in taps for the most frequent action in the app.
Final Design

An app that knows
who you are

Role-adaptive interfaces mean employees see their day, managers see their team, and HR sees the organization — all from the same product, each experience precisely right-sized.

behance.net/gallery/234363557/Emplora
Emplora — Main View

Emplora — HR Management Platform

Emplora — Screen 2
Emplora — Screen 3
Emplora — Screen 4
Design Decisions

Built for the
human at work

Role-Adaptive Interface

Problem
Three user types needed completely different primary experiences from the same app. A single navigation forced everyone into the wrong context.
Approach
Role auto-detected at login renders a purpose-built dashboard: employee sees their day, manager sees their team, HR admin sees the organization.
User Benefit
Zero configuration. Open the app and you're in your context — no role selection screen, no menu to navigate.
Business Benefit
45% improvement in task completion vs. baseline HR apps. All three personas reported the experience felt built for them specifically.

"My Day" Smart Summary

Problem
Employees had to navigate multiple sections to check leave balance, read announcements, and see pending tasks — daily friction for the most routine interactions.
Approach
A smart summary at the top of the employee dashboard surfaces leave balance, pending tasks, and key announcements in a single glance — no navigation required for the 80% daily use case.
User Benefit
The most common daily check takes seconds, not navigation sequences. Employees spend time working, not managing their HR interface.
Business Benefit
Dramatically lower daily HR support queries. Employees are more self-sufficient when the information they need is immediately visible without asking.

3-Tap Leave Application

Problem
Industry-standard leave application required 12 taps — leave type, dates, reason, attachments, approver selection. Each step a potential exit point.
Approach
3-tap core flow for the 90% common case: leave type → dates → confirm. Advanced fields behind "More options" for the 10% that need them. Progressive disclosure, never forced complexity.
User Benefit
75% reduction in effort for the most frequent action in the app. Leave application feels like checking a box, not filling a form.
Business Benefit
Higher leave utilization — employees submit leave earlier, reducing unplanned absences. Managers approve faster when they see a cleaner request.

Manager Approval with Context

Problem
Managers approved leave requests blind — no team coverage view, no employee history, no sense of impact. Decisions were guesses, not judgments.
Approach
The approval screen shows the employee's recent leave history, current team coverage, and pending count alongside the request — all the context needed to decide confidently in one screen.
User Benefit
Managers make better decisions faster. No tab-switching, no spreadsheet checks, no "let me look into this" delays.
Business Benefit
Faster approval cycle reduces employee wait time and planning uncertainty. Contextual approvals reduce coverage conflicts by making their impact visible before the decision.
Design System

Enterprise clarity,
human warmth

Color Tokens
--accent (Growth Green) #22c55e
--accent-sec (Violet) #7c3aed
--bg #040a06
--bg2 #060f08
--teal (Attendance) #2dd4bf
Role Components
Employee Manager HR Admin Pending Approved
Mobile Type Scale
28px Display — Screen Title
18px Section Header
14px Body — Card content and descriptions
11px LABEL / CAPTION
3 Role Experiences
Employee Self-service, daily summary, leave & payslip
Manager Team view, approvals, contextual history
HR Admin Organization view, policy, payroll, reports
Measured Outcomes

Fewer taps,
more humanity

Usability testing validated the core thesis: when enterprise apps put the employee first, every metric improves — completion rates, time on task, and satisfaction alike.

0
Task Completion Rate

Improvement in usability test task completion vs. baseline HR apps.

0
Leave Application

Down from an industry average of 12 taps. A 75% reduction in effort.

0
Complete HR Modules

Fully designed: Leave, Payslip, Attendance, Approvals, Directory, Tasks, Notices, Profile.

0
Role Experiences

Distinct, purpose-built interfaces for employees, managers, and HR admins.

Key Learnings

What this project taught me

01
Who uses ≠ who buys
HR software is purchased by HR admins but used daily by employees. Designing for the buyer produces a configurable system. Designing for the user produces something people actually adopt. The tension between these two must be resolved at the architecture level, not patched with feature flags.
02
Role-adaptive UX is a structural decision
Giving different roles different entry points isn't a UX pattern — it's an architectural commitment. Deciding early that the employee dashboard and the HR admin dashboard are fundamentally different screens freed us to optimize each without compromising the other.
03
Reducing taps reduces friction and anxiety
The 3-tap leave flow isn't just faster — it changes how employees feel about requesting leave. The simpler the act, the less it feels like "asking permission." That emotional shift translates directly into higher utilization rates and earlier submission, which benefits managers and planners downstream.
04
Context transforms manager decisions
The approval screen was the most impactful single screen in the product. When managers approve with context — history, coverage, pending count — they make better decisions and feel more confident making them. That confidence cascades into faster approvals and lower conflict rates.

"Emplora forced me to confront a question I've had to answer on every enterprise product since: who is this product actually for? Not who commissioned it — who uses it every day and lives with its decisions. Once I shifted the design priority to the employee rather than the HR administrator, the IA became obvious. The employee wants to do one thing quickly and get back to their job. The administrator wants to configure everything. Those are not the same product. Resolving that tension — not in a feature-flag way, but at the structural level — was the work."

Rupesh Chavan — Lead Product Designer